The Model Day for Success – What it is and why have one?

One common topic I tend to discuss with expansion stage management teams when offering sales and marketing support is keeping team members focused. I like to create a model day for success to accomplish this. If it is managed as a directional tool, sales people will gravitate to it and utilize it. If you micro manage it the results will not be optimal. The following explains what I mean.

The Model Day for Success describes an ideal day in terms of how a sales person’s time should be spent. Too often we allow ourselves to fall into poor time management habits and work on things that are other than non-urgent/important. The Model Day for Success helps us avoid this common pitfall. In addition, it forces individuals to dedicate the correct amount of time and energy to being proactive rather than reactive. Once again a common ailment of sales teams is they allow themselves to be so consumed with activities that they fail to prospect and continually build a fresh pipeline of opportunities for the next months and quarters. The following Model Day for Success provides a daily roadmap of time expenditure. The Model Day for Success divides activities into two broad categories; 1 – Reactive, 2 – Proactive. A list of common activities is provided below as a convenient reference. Separating daily tasks into these categories will assure success and allow individuals to be purposeful in the execution of their jobs.

Reactive activities

• Lead management/in-bound opportunities – Reviewing inbound opportunities, retrieving and reviewing voicemail and incoming e-mails
• Scheduled activities including scheduled calls, demonstrations, appointments, technical conference calls, proposal and ROI development, preparation for presentations
• General follow up and fulfillment – Providing literature, white papers, etc to prospects. Communicating with Internal and External Sales resources.
• Reviewing Opportunity Assessments and devising account strategies
• Administrative work

Proactive activities

• Campaigns – Outbound calling/emailing to suspects/prospects and current customers in support of sales/recruiting campaigns
• Target Account Penetration – Profiling and outbound calling into suspects/prospects from target partner/account lists
 

Sales Representative (All times coincide with the time zone for the territory assigned)

• 8am-830am Prepare for the day (personal organization and preparedness)

• 830am-9am Reactive activities

• 9am-11am Proactive Activities

• 11am-12pm Reactive activities

• 12pm-1pm Lunch

• 1pm-3pmReactive activities

• 3pm-4pmProactive Activities

• 4pm-5pmReactive activities

• 530pm-6pm Preparation for next day(personal organization and preparedness)